Yume
by chromeknickers
Summary: Is it better to have loved and lost than to ever have loved at all? Find out for yourself by reading this short vignette on Draco Malfoy.
1. Vignette

_Ime no ai wa  
Kurushiku ari keri  
Odorokite  
Kakisagure domo  
Te nimo hureneba._ -- Otomo No Yakamochi

**Yume***

There is a bitterness of the soul that cannot be meliorated with the balm of Gilead.  
No nepenthe can soothe its pain; no instrument can stitch its wound.  
It is forever facing backward below the heath above the sea.  
This is the turmoil; this is the confusion; this is the feeling of loss.

He could never delineate the moment when reality and illusion blurred into one.  
He could never gauge the initial reaction of the action fused with the Self.  
He could only deal in the concrete and in absolutes.  
Abstractions, to him, were a failure of the mind.

His dreams were the preamble to a thought, a prologue to an end.  
In his dreams he did not escape reality, he became it.  
He was conscious of Self, of space and of time, and yet he transcended them all.  
He was Infinite, yet he was Finite.

His dreams allotted a false sense of power and control.  
Yet, mercifully, they also mollified him with a milieu of clemency.  
Here he was truly the master of his domain.  
Here _he_ meted out punishments and rewards.

His castigation of Self could only be found in his dreams.  
His salvation was here too, offered by the last person he would ever ask.  
It was in _her_ he sought forgiveness.  
And it was in _her_ he fathomed piety.

She, in turn, only represented a lingering thought, a flickering moment of hope.  
She was never given true form or shape.  
She was the essence of light, of unbridled emotions.  
She was his _kibono hikari_.*

It was in the remnant of a fragment of a feeling in which he found her.  
She was hidden in the very recess of his soul's depths.  
She shone out of a niche he had long thought abandoned, long thought forsaken.  
There she would wait for him, and to her he would always go.

But the waking to reality proves too wanting.  
The disillusionment closes in so fast that he cannot breathe.  
The mind slowly registers the subterfuge.  
The heart's rhythm slows down; bile rises to the throat.

He shakes his head, disturbing the cobwebs of his meditations.  
Reality quickly sinks in, and the vestiges of the dream begin to fade.  
But the nascent feelings will never wane.  
If only, they will linger as her image imprints on his soul.

_Better never to have met you  
In my dream  
Than to wake and reach  
For hands that are not there._*

**~*~**

**Author notes:**

Translations:

*Yume - Japanese for dream  
*Kibono Hikari - Japanese for Light of Hope

Originally, this story was titled Yami, which means Darkness. Yume, which means Dream, is much more fitting.

--Also, I refer to "abstractions" here as "preoccupations", or simply as daydreaming.


	2. Explanation

So to explain a bit about **Yume**...

I wrote **Yume** in response to Tennyson's famous quote: "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all". For some reason or another, I had picked up a copy of Tennyson's poems and read this one. After reading it, I immediately thought of Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley (sad, no?). _The true story behind Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley_, I thought. Although these two characters are strictly fanon, it is not absurd to assume that these two could harbour secret feelings for one another in their minds, or in their dreams. After all, J.K.R doesn't go into their thought processes.

Keeping Tennyson's quote in mind, I recalled a famous Japanese poem by Otomo No Yakamochi: "Better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there". Obviously, Yakamochi believed that it was not better to have loved and lost -- to him, it was better to have never loved at all. So with both Tennyson and Yakamochi in mind, I wrote this short vignette on Draco Malfoy.

A vignette is a type of poem -- it is fragmented and often written or portrayed as snapshots in time. In the case of **Yume**, I took a snapshot of Draco's thought process as he dreams. The poem, itself, is not coherent and is slightly vague and ambiguous. To be quite honest, it is confusing, as most dreams often are (take the contradicting line "It is forever facing backward below the heath above the sea"). Only in the last two verses does the vignette start to make sense, and that is because Draco is waking up. In fact, true clarity comes in the last two lines: "But the nascent feelings will never wane/If only, they will linger as her image imprints on his soul". Draco is fully awake and very bitter. His vision of her was merely a dream, but the feelings associated with that dream will not depart. That is when I end with the English translation of my epigram (Yakamochi's poem). Draco bitterly wishes he had never met her in his dreams, for he knows he shall never have upon waking. Instead, he has to live with an imagined memory of her.

**Words chosen**:

Now I know I used some words that forced some to crack open the old dictionary (or go online), and I'm sorry for that, but I found the words suited what I was trying to say. Furthermore, they added to the sense of confusion that made the dream seem more surreal.

_balm of Gilead_ and _nepenthe_ - these are both allusions to mythical or magical potions, drinks, salves, or drugs that are used to erase bad memories or feelings. I felt them appropriate to use since Draco lives in a magical world where such a potion could be easily obtained.

_meliorated_ - I chose this word because I was torn between "healing" and "correcting" Draco's soul. Meliorate combines both -- it is the act of making something better, either by healing, mending or correcting it.

_mollify him with a milieu of clemency_ - milieu of clemency means an environment of humanity; thus, Draco's dreams satisfy him with a sense of humanity, of kindliness. (Draco is _not_ a good man in real life, in waking, but his dreams offer him the potential to be a good man, to be a human).

One of the more confusing, yet very accurate, lines of the poem is "His dreams allotted a false sense of power and control". Draco, like any one of us, is not in control of his own life -- at least upon waking. However, in his dreams, Draco is in full control of his being, but the control, itself, is not real: it is false. That is, the feeling of being in control is not real -- it is just a dream.

His dreams, themselves, are not restricted to a harsh and demanding environment (one controlled by his father and the Death Eaters). Rather his dreams allow him to escape the conventional mould. Here he can be someone else. Here he can show mercy, understanding, and human kindness. In the following lines, we find out why: it is because of _her_.

Through her his dreams provide him not only an escape from Self (the demands placed upon him by his father, Voldemort, and even himself), but an outlet for him to become someone who he has potential to be: good, charitable, compassionate, etc. Hence this is why he castigates himself in his dream, reproaching himself and censuring his previous actions, something he could never bring himself to do in waking. Through _her_ he finds that there are other ways. In waking, he follows the path of his father, but in his dreams, he follows another path, Ginny's. However, when he wakes from his dream, he realises, and we realise too, that her path cannot be chosen. She's not real -- at least, not a real option for _him_.

Draco Malfoy, in his dreams, finds love of self and discovers what the love of another can give him, and it offers him hope. She _is_ his light of hope. Unfortunately, that hope is an illusion: there is no love; there is no Ginny. He can have her love in his dreams, but when he tries to reach for her with his hands upon waking, he will find that he is only grasping at air. This is the bitter realisation; this is the subterfuge; this is the deception. Ginny's love isn't real.

Sadly, for Draco Malfoy, it would have been better to never have loved her in his dreams because he cannot have her upon waking. The bile rises to his throat as he realises this. His dreams are just an escape. His idea of control is an illusion. He sees what he cannot have, and it gives him real pain. The sad fact is that he cannot ignore these feelings. The feelings of love and love lost do not fade with time: they linger, leaving imprints on the soul.

~ Hope that explained some =)


End file.
